The present invention relates generally to education systems, and more particularly to computer-based tutoring methods and systems.
In a traditional education system, an instructor and a group of students meet in a classroom. The instructor gives a lecture, and the students listen. How well a student learns the subject is gauged periodically by grades on homework and tests. Although the traditional education system has been entrenched for centuries, it inherently suffers from a number of deleterious constraints.
One constraint is access. Access to the traditional education system is limited to students who can travel to the classroom and whose schedule may accommodate a specific class. For a full-time student, access is not an issue. For part-time students, including employees receiving professional training, however, travel, schedule, and attendant expenses restrict the opportunities for classroom instruction.
Another constraint is limited opportunity for instructor-student interaction. Lectures are traditionally structured in fixed periods and follow a specified pace to fit within the allotted time. Often there is limited opportunity for questions and answers. Since individual students learn at different paces and may have questions on different portions of the subject, classroom instruction often does not meet the needs of individual students (in contrast to students in aggregate). A related issue is timeliness of feedback. As discussed above, students are evaluated on the basis of grades on homework and tests. Deficiencies in students' understanding of the subject matter are uncovered after they have received poor grades. Depending on the frequency of the homework and tests, students may struggle with new material because they have not yet mastered the previous material. They then must perform remedial study and play catch-up with the current material being taught in class.
Computer-based instruction has provided a more flexible mode of education. One option is software locally installed on an individual personal computer. With the advent of high-speed Internet connections, another option is software loaded on a central server (or system of servers), which may be accessed from remote locations. Access is then no longer constrained by distance and time. Computer-based instruction, however, often shares some of the same limitations as traditional classroom instruction. In particular, instruction modules are highly structured, and students' understanding of the material is tested at periodic intervals (at the end of each module, for example). What are needed are computer-based tutoring methods and systems which adapt to the learning skills of individual students and which provide rapid evaluation of students' performance.